A Decent Sized Audience Bites Into Anthony Bourdain's The Taste

Last night’s ratings were filled with ups and downs, as well as some even numbers during primetime, with NBC probably faring the worst and ABC’s new reality cooking competition seriesThe Taste landing somewhere in the middle. Overall, Tuesday was a pretty basic evening for the ratings, with Go On probably faltering the hardest.

I’m a bigger believer in getting the bad news out of the way first, so let’s talk about Go On. NBC’s hit freshman comedy has fallen on hard-ish times since returning from the holiday break (dropping from around six million to closer to four million an episode), however, this week proved to be a bit of a bigger fall. According to EW, Go On dropped 24% in the ratings, only bringing in 4 million total viewers and a 1.3 rating. It’s follow-up, The New Normal was also down 13%.

Fox’s comedy block, which includes Raising Hope, New Girl, and Ben and Kate--the latter of which has now been pulled from the schedule--were actually all up between 6% and 11%, making Fox’s move with Ben and Kate a little confusing. I know the show doesn’t do well in the ratings, but the least the network could have done was to pull episodes on a down week. In other network news, CBS was in reruns and the CW held even.

Which brings us to The Taste, a new reality competition series judged by Anthony Bourdain, Nigella Lawson, Ludo Lefebvre, and Brian Malarkey. Last night’s premiere did decently in the ratings, pulling in 6 million total viewers and a 2.2 rating in the 18-49 demographic. The judges and contestants were still feeling their way through the rules during last night’s episode, but with the blind tasting and the potential for judges to send home contestants from their own team, I wouldn’t be shocked if that twist was enough to bring more viewers in during the coming weeks.